How to Audit What Your Dealership's Marketing Vendors Actually Do
To audit what your dealership's marketing vendors actually do each month, compare three things side by side: what the contract says they'll do, what changed in your accounts, and what got better. Most vendor reports show activity. This audit shows work. It takes about two hours the first time and 30 minutes a month after that.
Why vendor reports don't answer the question
A monthly vendor report is written by the people being graded. It's not usually dishonest, but it's built to show effort: impressions served, posts published, keywords tracked. None of that tells you whether anyone made a decision on your account last month. The audit below does.
Step 1: Pull the scope from the contract
Find each vendor's contract or proposal and list every deliverable with a number attached. "SEO" isn't a deliverable. "Four blog posts and two landing pages a month" is. If a line item has no quantity, write down what you assumed it meant, then ask the vendor to confirm in writing.
While you're in the contract, mark any line item priced at $0 or listed as not included. Those are the channels nobody is running.
Step 2: Check the change history in each account
Every major platform keeps a record of what was changed and when. This is the most honest view of vendor work you'll get.
- Google Ads: the Change History view lists every edit to campaigns, budgets, bids and keywords, with dates. Filter to the last 30 days.
- Meta Ads Manager: the activity history shows edits to campaigns and ad sets.
- Google Business Profile: look at recent posts, photo uploads, and whether reviews got responses.
- Your website: ask for a list of pages published or changed, or check your CMS for recent edits.
An account with no changes in 30 days is either perfectly tuned or unattended. It's almost never the first one.
Step 3: Match the work to the scope
Build a simple table with one row per deliverable and three columns: promised, delivered, evidence. "Four blog posts" promised, "two" delivered, links as evidence. Do this for every vendor. The gaps are your conversation for the next vendor call.
Step 4: Check outcomes, not outputs
Activity only matters if something moved. For each channel, pick one number that matters and compare it to the same month last year:
- Paid search: cost per sale, not cost per lead or click
- SEO: organic traffic and leads, read together with rankings. Flat rankings with falling traffic is a different problem from falling rankings. Our free dealership SEO audit gives you a baseline.
- Listings: calls and direction requests from Google Business Profile
- Website: Core Web Vitals on your VDP template and lead conversion rate
Step 5: Ask the one question that sorts vendors
On your next call with each vendor, ask: "What did you change on our account last month, and why?"
A good vendor answers with specific decisions and the reasoning behind them. A weak answer is a list of tasks completed or a walkthrough of the report. You're paying for judgment applied to your account, and this question tells you whether you're getting it.
Step 6: Repeat it monthly in 30 minutes
After the first audit, keep the table and update it each month: the change history count, the delivered-versus-promised gaps, and one outcome per channel. Three months of that table gives you everything you need for a renewal negotiation, or for a decision to switch.
What to do with the results
If a vendor is doing the work and the numbers are moving, keep them. If the account has gone quiet, or the $0 lines have stayed $0 for a year, you've found the real cost: not the invoice, but the work that isn't happening. Our guide to consolidating your dealership tech stack covers what to do next.
Or skip the audit
The reason this audit is necessary is that most vendor setups separate the people doing the work from any view of whether it worked. With our Fully Managed service, Astra keeps a record of the actions it takes or queues on your account, so you can see what was done and why without waiting for a monthly report. One flat price per rooftop covers ads, SEO, website, listings and creative.
